


In the Heart of the Woods

by Sasskarian



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dorian is a Good Friend, Emerald Graves, F/M, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mild Smut, Other, Rarepair, Romance, Sex, The Black Emporium Exchange, Tumblr Prompt, look i have a lot of feelings okay, varric likes to meddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-07-01 13:04:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasskarian/pseuds/Sasskarian
Summary: Sometimes a past can be overcome. Sometimes it can't. And sometimes, something that could have been disappears under unthinking words, and the person you're trying to catch slips right through your fingers.Or, what if Inquisitor Isera Lavellan and Cullen just kept missing each other, never quite able to bridge the mage vs templar gap? What if there was one rejection too many, and someone else started to love her instead?





	1. Confessions are Easier in the Dark

**AU Prompt:** What if Isera and Cullen never managed to overcome their demons and she found a lover elsewhere?  
**Black Emporium [ineligible] Prompt:** Fairbanks/Inquisitor

***  
*** 

 _You left the Templars, but do you trust mages? Can you think of me as anything more?_  

Less than a fortnight of sweet words, gentle touches, and stolen kisses are the only weapons she could levy against the trauma that shaped a man’s youth. And for a moment in time, Isera hoped. Cullen’s eyes softened when she walked into a room, sought hers out across the war table. Turned the rich, nut-brown color of Ferelden ale in the light of his office fire. 

She’s been careful, hasn’t she? Since that first outburst in Haven, she’s done her best to be less casual in her use of magic, in tiptoeing through the scant safe patches of his heart. 

But it wasn’t enough. Like the few others she’s gotten too close to, Cullen’s eyes still saw only the power coursing through her blood. It took only a week and a day since that promising first kiss for him to return to seeing her as an enemy—or a useful tool, at best. 

“You’re brooding again,” a voice stage-whispers in her ear. Isera shrugs off Dorian’s friendly concern, keeping her eyes glued to the steep, treacherous path. 

Two months since she’s left Skyhold, driving herself without mercy or care for her body, and the tension has yet to seep from her shoulders through the Frostbacks. The Plains. Now the Graves. A month of marching through her people’s lost homeland, of meeting good, frightened people and their protector, still hasn’t dulled the pain of Cullen Rutherford scooping her heart from her chest and tossing it back at her feet. 

 _You’re a mage, Inquisitor. Can I ever trust you?_  

The letters Harding delivers without comment are too formal, and deal only with duty and reports. Only once, a hastily-scrawled note delivered by a raven with a white spot on its breast, does a letter hint at something more, at some regret over his words. He blames it on memories riding him hard the night before, on a reflex he can’t control. He blames it on too many nights spent cocooned in reports of Venatori atrocities, and on a lifetime of conditioning. 

In other words, everything but himself. 

“Isera?” 

The sigh escapes her before she can stop it, but she lets Dorian pull her aside and tries to ignore the groans of relief from the soldiers following them. “Yes, Dorian?” 

He looks at her and Isera can’t suppress the thought that his sharp gaze sees more than she wants him to. His hand gentles on her arm, a comforting warmth against the chill that’s flooded her since that day in Cullen’s office. 

“Ready to confess yet?” he asks, the words light even under the anger simmering in his eyes. “Admirable as your efforts are, what _will_ you do when there’s nothing left to kill and you’re still tearing yourself to pieces?” 

Isera says nothing, but she doesn’t really have to; Cole coalesces in the space between two trees and she can almost taste the Fade still billowing from his feet even as he walks toward them. 

“Burning.” He tips his head at her, ridiculous hat casting his face with shadows that almost turn him into a stranger. “Burning and burning, so bright. Why are you cold?” He looks around, fingers twisting together in distress. “We could make a fire?” 

“It’s not that kind of cold, Cole,” she says, reaching for his hand. Touching Cole can be tricky, at times, because sudden movement still startles him. As he moves toward the human side of the existence scale, touch has become an important thing, a way to balance both of them in the unexpected breadth of their bond. Affection warms her heart as his fingers twine with hers and give a tentative squeeze. 

“It made him sad,” Cole says, eyes distant, and she wonders what secrets he’s seeing that puts that sorrow in his eyes. “He listened to the memory and not the words, and the hurt was the only defense he knew.” 

Dorian’s gaze flicks between them, warning that even if she escapes answering his questions now, he isn’t going to let the subject go. And it’s been that way from the beginning, she acknowledges, nodding to Harding and Cassandra to set up camp. Dorian Pavus, Altus of Tevinter, crashed into her life at breakneck speed and with the kind of sass she’d mostly only heard from her brother. A quick friendship, forged in a future she’ll break her back to prevent and the shared burden of being outcasts by nature, he’s been a near-constant companion— and occasionally a thorn in her side— since. 

On one hand, telling her friends may color their opinion of the Commander, and that’s not acceptable in a time of war. Commander and soldier have to be able to trust each other, at minimum, in order to succeed, and passing judgement on your officers causes resentment. On the other, Cullen’s rejection is an open secret among the agents and troops, and biting her tongue around the anger only hurts herself. 

So maybe she’ll tell Dorian, and maybe some of the darkness swirling around her heart will ease. 

“He did _what?_ ” The shout echoes across the camp, leaving awkward silence in its wake. Varric hunches his shoulders, shooting them a look through the humidity-lank hair hanging over his eyes, and even Cassandra has stopped pretending that she isn’t listening, coming to stand by her side. “ _Vishante kaffas._ ” 

“Dorian,” Isera tries, but her protest disappears under the rude sound Varric makes. 

“I expected better of him,” he says, something angry and dark in the shadow of the words. “If Fenris can overcome his tragic backstory, certainly Curly can, if he wanted to.” 

 _If he wanted to._ And doesn’t that just sting like a wicked bitch? 

“And this is why you have been driving yourself as if to tame the Graves single-handed?” Cassandra speaks at last, eyes hard and flat as chips of stone; that cool voice and rigid posture intimidated her once, long ago, but it’s easy to see the concern under it. “Do not think we have not noticed your disregard for yourself.” 

“I wanted to… not feel it,” Isera says, fingers curling into fists. The temptation to defend her choice, her self-punishment, is strong but in the end, her irresponsibility _was_ foolish. “To not feel at all for a while.” 

“Yes, I hear murder therapy is all the rage this season,” Dorian says, and at least that is familiar, that he’s sassing her, grounding her with that blend of sarcasm and wit and affection, and she smiles a little. 

Some of the hurt falls from her shoulders; in its place comes sorrow and an exhaustion so deep, it wraps around her very bones. Their pace _has_ been unrelenting, days spent on foot, staff at the ready. Too little rest, too little food, has taken its toll on all of them, but she ignored that. If she could make it a little further from Skyhold, she told herself, if she could tire herself out a little more, maybe it would stop hurting so much. Each enemy at the end of her staff, every mile between her and Skyhold, every refugee she extends her hand to, has been a brick in the wall shutting out thoughts of Cullen. 

Now those bricks are falling away, a barrier no more, and the last piece reveals itself; shame now floods her throat and it tastes acrid, like smoke, and the smell of burnt flesh, and resentment swallowed down to keep hidden. In that moment, when Cullen looked into her eyes and snubbed the very heart of her, twenty years wasn’t enough distance from the fear and hatred in her clan’s eyes. Shame had burned bright in her then, too, reinforced by the silver curls that grew in place of her father’s auburn, by the quiet and thorough exclusion of her until Deshanna’s intervention and Ethelan’s sharp tongue were the only things standing between her and abandonment. 

Twenty years of silent apologies and caution tangled around her throat like a goddamn noose, hung by those quiet, furious words and the twist of a scarred mouth she’d kissed not an hour earlier. 

Something inside Isera snaps, shatters and reforms inside a breath, and she fears it might just be her heart. 

*** 

She marches, exhausted and heartsore, into Argon’s Lodge a week after that, boots bathed in so much Freemen blood, the soles are stained red. Facing a city’s worth of Red Templars left her shaken, sick to her stomach to look into those twisted faces; she feels the pull of the tainted lyrium even still, nails scratching long and sharp under her skin, always hissing dark whispers in her mind. 

The naked gratitude in the refugees’ eyes is another weight dropped on her, stones twice as heavy as granite, and by the time she’s ten steps inside the compound, her lips curl in a reflexive snarl. 

Isera tries to be a good person, a responsible one. Years of Deshanna’s quiet voice and magical grooming shaped her into one for whom duty is more than a mere word. But the burden of Inquisitor rests heavy on her, something unasked for. Many and long are the days she struggles to find ‘Isera’ under ‘Inquisitor,’ and too often, she holds onto herself with nothing but fingertips. Every voice calling to her for help, every murmured greeting of “Your Worship,” and “Inquisitor,” carries the unspoken plea of “savior.” 

And with every voice and every greeting, ‘Isera’ slips a little further away. 

With Cullen, that brief, too-good-to-be-true time, she felt like just _Isera_ again. Like for a few hours, she could set aside the Inquisitor and simply be a woman spending time with a man, perhaps falling in love, building a life. Wouldn’t that have been lovely? Hard, to be sure, falling in love in the middle of a war— but worth it, in the end. Two damaged, exhausted people finding comfort and warmth in each other. 

...she doesn’t know when he changed. When he started looking at her as if erasing the staff on her back in his mind, as if she could somehow _not be_ a mage. How ironic it is, she thinks, furious all over again, that the people who counted on her to close the Breach, who now count on her to battle an almost-god for them, hate the very thing she would save them with. 

Dorian raises a hand, but doesn’t stop her as she sweeps by him, the leather of her armor swishing gently. Whatever quip Varric has tucked up in the smirking corner of his mouth dies before he airs it, eyes following her as she stalks through the camp. _Stalk_ is the right word for her movements, and something predatory swims through her heart, a there-and-gone-again result of carrying the rejection with her for too long. 

No, she admits, slowing. This has always been there, this darkness that took lives at eight years old; it is the same darkness she throws a harness on and loses herself to in battle, the fury that carries strained muscles and wrung-hollow mana into one more victory. One more. Always just _one more_. 

Weary, she rests her fist against the wall, craving a moment of peace with every fiber of her being. 

It’s tempting to smash her fist into the wood— it’s old, more driftwood than plank, and would splinter under the storm of her rage. It would release a little more of that tension, that coiled knot sitting stubborn and painful in her back, and might even slake a little of her temper. But it would also be destructive, would upset Dorian. Losing control would disappoint Varric and annoy Cassandra— and frighten the refugees around her. 

And they don’t deserve that. Her burdens aren’t their fault, not really, and they’ve suffered enough. So she turns from temptation and walks to the central fire, sliding into the spot Dorian makes for her. Without a word, he slips his hand over hers, and holds on tight, and as the low, comforting chatter of the camp drones into the night, it’s a lifeline. 

*** 

“What a pair we make, eh Inquisitor?” Fairbanks’ Orlesian-flavored voice floats to her over the pop and hiss of the dying flames. They are the only people left, each staring into the fire with their own thoughts as one by one, everyone else slipped away to bed. 

Keeping her voice low, Isera replies. “How so?” 

He leans forward and rests his chin against steepled fingers, the reds and oranges highlighting the strong planes of his face. “I chose to bury myself under the name Fairbanks. To hide and use it as a weapon, a shield, for the lost people of the Graves.” His lips curl upwards, a hint of a smile, and he continues. “You, I think, did not have such a choice. It has been do or die from the first moment, no?” 

Nothing fills the air except the crackle of the logs. 

He’s not wrong. It _has_ been a race to beat death from the very beginning: Prove you’re not Justinia’s murderer. Prove you’re holy, a prophet, Andraste-sent. Prove that you can lead us. Give us your name, your heritage, your beliefs. Fight for us, bleed for us. Die for us. 

Haven and Skyhold and the Inquisition have been chewing her into pieces for months, demanding sacrifices and leadership and so many things, Isera has lost track of the number of them all. 

“I hardly know my own self,” she admits, voice almost a whisper, closing her eyes; confessions such as this are easier in the dark. “The Orlesians want to put me on a leash, keep me as an entertaining pet. The Venatori would see me dead, or if not dead then a slave. Ferelden is still pissed about Redcliffe, the Dalish are disappearing, and there’s no word from the Wardens.” Every word that drips from her mouth releases another gush of exhaustion, of bitterness. _Here,_ the Inquisition said, shoving the shattered pieces of the world into her hands. _Fix it._ “It is… exhausting.” 

It isn’t until she feels warmth seeping past her leathers that she opens her eyes, finding herself looking into Fairbanks’. In the light of the fire, the pale blue hides under a patina of green, like copper exposed to air and water, and the artist that lay sleeping in Isera’s heart surfaces for a moment to appreciate it. 

“You need time to simply be,” he says. “To find Isera again.” Sympathy twines in his voice, an understanding of good works with high cost that goes beyond words. She doesn’t want sympathy, though. She’s not entirely sure what she wants, actually, but her heart gives a hard bump when he says her name, softening it into something sweet on her ear, and then she gets it. 

Slow and deliberate, giving enough time for him to move away if he wants, Isera reaches out and strokes her thumb down the scar over his brow, brushing from brow to cheek to jaw. Her fingers— golden from the sun, thin, covered equally in scars and _vallaslin_ — look foreign when they rest on his skin, somehow. As if she’s disconnected from herself, torn in two by revelation and boldness. Part of her, that quiet, formal part that wraps dignity and isolation around herself like a shroud, asks what the hell she’s doing. And the predator in her heart, the feral, bared-teeth warrior who bathes in blood and ichor and glories in the hunt, howls a wordless approval.

This won’t be a mistake. It might be foolish, but not a mistake. Isera trusts him. As much as she trusts anyone not in her company, at any rate. A month sweeping across the Graves and hacking at the taproot of the Freemen, the Venatori, left them crossing each others’ paths often. They are friendly, if not quite friends, and with the Freemen gone, can now look together at allying with her Inquisition. But right now… right now, she doesn’t care about being allies. Or the Inquisition. Or the hand of a once-templar, holding the whip that drove her from Skyhold to here. 

 _Time to simply be._ Her touch is an invitation rather than a demand, a silent offer of— and request for— comfort. After a brief hesitation, Fairbanks brushes his thumb across her cheek. 

“Inquisitor,” he murmurs, voice edging toward hoarse. “Does no one hold your heart?” 

 _Can I ever trust you?_  

“He didn’t want it,” she whispers, pushing away the sting of that particular knife. 

Fairbanks nods and lets his thumb creep higher. “I can make no promises,” he says at last, cupping her cheek. 

Isera smiles, and covers his hand with her own. “I’m not asking for any.” Eyes still locked on his, she turns her head to press her lips to his palm. “Just a few hours to be myself. No Inquisitor, no Herald. Nothing more than someone enjoying the company of a friend.” 

“Friend?” Fairbanks laughs under his breath, shaking his head. It changes his face, makes those haughty aristocratic features softer. “My lady, I don’t think my thoughts are very _friendly_ at the moment.” 

Isera tilts her head, trying to erase the smile she can feel curving her lips. “And what thoughts are you having, then, _Monsieur_ Fairbanks?” she asks, looking at him from under her lashes. 

Amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes, he leans closer. The whisper-soft brush of his lips against her left cheek, and then her right, surprises her, and she wonders for a moment if she’s misread things before his hand moves to rest under her chin. With the smallest nudge, he tilts her face up, and kisses her. 

He is gentle, softer than she’d expected for a nobleman turned vigilante. It’s not the same gentility Cullen possessed— this is not inexperience or vulnerability making him hesitant, or fear keeping her at a distance. Fairbanks moves slow and easy, true, but his touch is quiet, confident, and declares that he knows exactly how to treat a lover. Despite the closed mouths, there is absolutely nothing chaste about this kiss, and her head swims with it. 

Tingles race down her spine as he pulls away, desire hot in his gaze. No one has looked at her like this, feasting on her with appreciative eyes. Like she’s something to be cared for, enjoyed, _savored._ Isera has taken a walk or two in the moonlight before, but there’s been nothing like this, this _wanting_. 

“I see,” she murmurs into the silence, fingers pressed to her mouth. “Most certainly not friendly.” 

“But not objectionable?” he asks, tracing the branches of _vallaslin_ across her cheek with a careful fingertip. “I would not care to add to your hardships.” 

And like that, her decision is made. His words, his delicate touches, solidify it into a spot behind her ribs that glows with heat. Smiling, Isera wraps her fingers through one of the loops on his jerkin and tugs. It’s not a hard tug— still not demanding— but he follows her lead, catching his balance on the bench with one hand. His other finds her waist, a polite, patient weight over the leathers she still wears. 

Their faces are still a handspan apart, and despite the way she is angled under him, he seems content to stay that way. “Are you going to kiss me?” she asks, smile running into smirk at his intake of breath. “Or are you being polite?” 

“I’d like to do more than kiss you, Isera,” Fairbanks says; this close to him, the deep notes of his voice rumble from his chest into hers, and sends a wave of wanting crashing through her. “None of it is _polite._ ” She doesn’t have much time to register the promise under the words before he slants his mouth over hers and whatever hesitations she feared from him wash away. 

Heat rolls over her, crown to toes, and when her mouth parts for him, the kiss changes from coaxing to fierce. The sound she makes at the first stroke of his tongue is indecent, a moan she can feel ripple through him, and his response is something clever that involves teeth and tongue and leaves her head spinning. Fairbanks’ arm slips around her hips and he pulls her closer, angling them until she scrabbles at his shoulders for balance. 

“ _Andrasté bien-aimée,_ ” he breathes, resting his brow against hers, and something about the words coils warm and heavy in her belly. “You are a sweet one, aren’t you.” It isn’t much of a question, Isera thinks, as he peppers her brow with feather-light kisses. 

With only a slight tremble, her hand moves to his neck, pulling at the leather tie holding his hair back. Something in his eyes softens as the locks of brown tumble around his face, as her fingers slide into the silken mass and tug him down for another kiss. Isera half-yelps into his mouth as he abruptly sits up, maneuvering them until she straddles his thigh and the bench beneath them. 

“Ass!” she hisses, slapping half-hearted and lame at his shoulder when he laughs, his lips moving from hers to her jaw. He murmurs something Orlesian into the curve of her shoulder and one hand slides from her hip to her shorn hair, curling into a fist and pulling until her choice is to follow his grasp or lose a few locks of her own. The hiss she lets out this time is as far from annoyance as possible and her mind blanks when his teeth settle on her skin; a sharp note of pain sings through her nerves, sizzling a path straight down her belly to settle between her thighs and when she arches up into him, he does it again. And again. 

“ _Kaffas._ ” Dorian’s favored swear falls from her lips without thought as Fairbanks trails up her neck, leaving nips and kisses in equal measure. “Fairbanks. _Evariste._ ” 

“ _Ma belle,_ ” is whispered into the shell of her ear, followed by a flick of tongue that draws a mewl from her that she thinks, with what’s left of her brain, she might be pissed about in the morning. Without her permission, her hips roll, grinding once, twice, and a third time against the hard thigh between hers when his teeth graze the pointed tip of her ear. 

After what seems like a lifetime— and still, not nearly long enough— Fairbanks swims back into view, a self-satisfied curl to his lips that on anyone else might have been called _smug._ Somewhere in the back of her mind, Isera knows it should annoy her, but all she does instead is kiss his stupid smirk and shudder in his arms, aroused enough for every movement to be pleasant torture. 

“ _Puis-je?_ ” he asks, nudging the collar of her duster, and though Isera knows only a few scraps of Orlesian, his question is clear. 

“Yes.” 

Slow and deft, Fairbanks peels one shoulder of her coat down, the whisper of leather on cloth loud in the night. The fire is well and truly dead now, and the only light comes from the moons above, casting silver shadows over the cut of his jaw; streams of moonlight drip down his hair, turning him from a man into a lover sculpted from marble and shadows. Heat simmers in his eyes, and her heart stutters when he stops with the coat halfway down her arms, gently restricting her movement, to kiss her breathless again. 

Before she’s fully aware of it, he’s tossing the coat and the first pieces of armor over another bench, fingers moving a little faster on the buckles of her underarmor. Dazed but game, she lets her own hands wander over the line of his jerkin, tugging on laces until she finds skin. Strange that when it counts, Isera is every bit the silent, patient hunter her brother is, but if she doesn’t get her hands on him soon, she might self-immolate from the heat he’s feeding with every touch. 

When all she accomplishes is knotting the laces around her hand, she growls— and he laughs again. “Need a hand, _Inquisiteur?_ ” The way her title rolls off his tongue sounds like benediction, like an endearment, and something small and wounded quivers in the depths of her heart. For a moment, Isera considers how dangerous this is, how a gentle, welcoming touch and a handful of steaming kisses might reopen the barely-healing scars Cullen left on her heart. Or how those scars might disappear under a pair of sober eyes and a mouth made for smiling. 

What kind of life could she have here, where the trees are taller than palaces, and her peoples’ verdant homeland stretches out as far as the eye can see? Could someone else close the rifts, defeat Corypheus? Could she return, once she has sloughed the Inquisitor from her shoulders and reclaimed herself? 

Would he even want her to? 

Questions for another time, she decides, pulling at the hem of his shirt with fraying patience. The cotton goes flying, and her only hope is that it doesn’t land in the embers behind her. 

“Oh,” she murmurs, surprised— though she shouldn’t be. Fairbanks has proven himself, if not a warrior, then a protector, and his body, like hers, bears the marks of duty: A thick, winding scar outlines his left collarbone, scrawled beneath it like a signature. Two scars pucker along his ribs, and her breath catches; tending to wounded with Mother Giselle taught her that knives sliding between ribs is fatal more often than it isn’t. 

For the first time since he kissed her, Fairbanks fidgets. It’s subtle, and small, just a shift of feet, but the muscles in his thigh ripple and tense under her. 

There is another slash, paper-thin and almost hidden, crossing his right pectoral, slanting down towards his arm. Sure that there is more still hidden beneath clothes and hair, she resolves to find them before the night is through. But there will be time for that in a while, so she simply traces the nearest with her fingertips. 

“Chevalier blade,” he says, quiet. “Escaping from the war, I sheltered a boy who lost his mother. This was my reward.” 

Not entirely sure why, Isera unlaces the top of her tunic and rolls her shoulder until it hangs off her, exposing heated skin to the night air. When he sucks in a sharp breath, she knows what he sees: three thick, ropey gouges curling from the side of her neck and disappearing down her back, interruptions in the _vallaslin_  branching across her body. The skin around it glows pale gold in the moon’s kiss, revealing scars of different shapes and sizes, acquired over her year saving Thedas from the monsters of the Fade. 

“Pride demon,” she murmurs, touching her neck. “Barrier failed at exactly the wrong moment.” Tapping a jagged cross, three inches below the hollow of her throat, she labels it, “Red Templar.” Gesturing to the scar above her lip, the one that Varric says gives her a constant smirk, she says, after swallowing thickly, “Corypheus.” 

Fairbanks is silent, almost solemn, as he touches his lips to each of the ones she named; he may have no magic running through his heart, but each small, quiet kiss feels like prayer. Like something holy, powerful, stripping her of bitterness and remaking her. “Warriors pay our toll in flesh, no?” he whispers, muffled against her skin. “What histories our bodies tell.” 

And with that, her self-control spools out to a single thread. His skin is soft under her hands, and sliding them through the hair on his chest makes a quiet _shh_. When his breath hitches and his belly jumps as fingertips graze the top of his trousers, Isera leans up and captures his mouth, eagerly sinking into the now-familiar taste of him. They are both breathing hard by the time they part, and before she can do more than gasp, Fairbanks has wrapped one strong arm around her and shifted her until her back is to his chest and her legs hang over his, feet only just reaching the ground. 

“This is a nice change.” He shouldn’t be able to see the grin from over her shoulder, but something in her voice gives her away and the kiss he presses beneath her ear silences her smart mouth. 

“May I touch you, Isera?” he asks, warm breath ruffling the curls behind her ear. 

“At this point, that question is a bit redundant,” Isera replies tartly; he pays her no mind, instead guiding her arm around his neck and coaxing her into leaning against him. “I’d ask what your supposedly rude plans are, but I don’t think you’d tell me.” 

“Mm.” Clever, calloused fingers slide under the hem of her tunic, dancing along the band of her leggings. “You are correct; I wouldn’t.” He laughs softly when she twists, impatient. Every nerve ending in her body feels like it’s on fire— and the bastard doesn’t even seem to be in a hurry. “You should try not to wake the camp, though. This would be a compromising position to be caught in, yes?” 

Her growl cuts off, choked into a soft whine when those clever fingers slip lower and stroke along the top of her lips. Right around the time she turns her to head to protest his stillness, his teeth graze the line of her spine and a soft, pleasant hum fills her head as his touch teases, sending ripples of pleasure skimming through her. When she returns to herself, Fairbanks has spread his own knees to spread hers, her arm still hooked around his neck the only thing giving her any balance. 

Being wide open, even through leathers, makes her squirm. And then his fingers resume their quest south and her toes curl in her boots. 

“ _Bien_ _,_ ” he whispers, easing a finger into her. Despite not being an innocent for years, Isera feels the slick, slow stretch as his palm comes to rest snug between her lips, and she immediately clenches down, welcoming his touch. A half-sob catches in her throat when he adjusts, but doesn’t move after that. She starts to growl, frustration or relief or begging, but quiets when he touches his lips to her temple. 

“Shh,” comes the soft admonishment, following by a damp brow dropping to her shoulder. 

Staying still and quiet through the first stroke is easy enough, but by the third, Fairbanks has slipped his hand over her mouth to muffle the noise she makes. Sweet words— at least, she assumes they’re sweet; it’s not like her crash course in Orlesian covered pillow talk, of all things— tumble from his lips as he brings her to an edge. 

And _stops._  

“You _bastard,_ ” she snarls against his palm. Or, maybe, “ _What_ are you _doing_?” Or perhaps even, “No, _please._ ” Whatever it is, even she doesn’t know, but Fairbanks shushes her with laughter in his voice and she tries to bite the hand covering her mouth in retaliation. 

“Such a fierce, wild thing,” he says, that note of amusement still loud and clear as he relaxes his hand enough for her to speak. “You must be patient.” 

She growls, canting her hips in obvious demand. “You’re a damn _tease._ ” 

“Mm. So I am.” He shrugs, hand dropping down to her waist and pulling her back up. How he can sit so calmly with his hand shoved in her trousers, Isera doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to. “We Orlesians,” he says, voice dropping to a bare murmur, “we all play the Grand Game in our own way, do we not?” 

Clearly, he doesn’t expect a proper answer, his finger sliding out of her with the same lazy, languid patience that he speaks with. “It is a long Game, _chérie_ ,” he continues, returning his hand and two fingers curl into her, the stretch reminding her how long it’s been since someone’s touched her— the sound that crawls from her throat when his thumb rasps across her nerves is almost inhuman. “And it is slow.” This time, he does something with his arm that she can’t quite see, but results in those long, broad fingers reaching a new angle that makes her swear and arch; the heel of her boots dig into the ground to give her leverage, and she meets his rhythm thrust for thrust. 

This close to him, she can now feel the quake in his muscles, strength and want restrained by formidable control, and the proof of his own arousal clear through both pairs of trousers. 

His strokes lose none of their grace, but speed and, as he murmurs in her ear, “But in the end, worth it, no?” his game plays out, pushing her over the edge he’d denied her before. Before she can scream, his hand clamps over her mouth again, muffling most of the noise as she shatters; for a long moment, all Isera is aware of is the slow-spinning starry sky, the wind in the trees, and Fairbanks’ lips gentle against whatever skin he can reach. 

Isera lays her head back against his shoulder, shuddering when his fingers slide out of her and trail up to her waist. “Better?” he asks, still lazily pressing kisses to the side of her neck, seemingly content to toy with her from here until the Maker or whoever steps from the sky and remakes the world. 

Words are fuzzy and hard to grasp, at the moment, so she murmurs agreeably. Still, he seems to get the message. 

“Then come, if you’d like.” With the gentlest nudge, Fairbanks helps her off his lap, steadying her when she sways on knees that don’t want to solidify. Easily, one hand bracing the small of her back, he reaches for their discarded pieces of armor before leading her around the firepit. His room, as it is, is nothing like her quarters back in Skyhold: A lute sits next to a pile of furs, a small table covered with the remains of a card game stands opposite the door, and that’s… really about all. 

There’s nothing nervous in the line of his body, but some latent sense opens its mouth and scents the air, reading something apologetic, almost brittle, in space between them. Isera leans against his back, sliding her arms loose around his hips— and under her touch, the unconscious tension evaporates. 

“It’s not much,” he admits, voice so quiet she strains to hear. “The Lodge doesn’t give much in the way of privacy, but… it’s ours.” He turns in her arms when she laughs, resting his hands on her shoulders. 

“I grew up traveling the length of the Free Marches in a glorified handcart.” Isera leans up to brush a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “The Dalish don’t have much privacy, either. And besides.” Her nose wrinkles up and, with her best-worst Orlesian impersonation, she adds, “Zis is much better zan ze zplendor of Val Royeaux.” 

That startles a laugh out of him and the shape of his smile against hers echoes deep; she knows that, however far her duties and the war may take her from this night, this memory will stay cherished and glowing in her heart. 

“I’m glad for it,” she breathes, hands sinking into his hair again as his smile turns into another kiss. Warmer than the ones before, there’s something honest and pure striking a chiming chord in her, and she melts into it. “Give me simple honesty over finery any day.” 

There’s nothing more to say for a few moments, since he backs her against the wall and crumbles every coherent thought the brief respite had born. She’s pretty sure she hears the snick of the door closing and locking, except she doesn’t really give a damn. Fairbanks’ hands cradle her face now, thumbs lined up to her cheeks and fingers slid along her jaw, and if it is possible to drown in the sensation of a kiss, well, they can put that on her gravestone. 

Rough wood under her hand brings her back to the moment, grounds her a little in the storm of _want_ he’s unleashed in her, and she tips her head back to watch the slow progression of her wrist in his hand as it slides up the wall. Her fingers touch cold metal and, never quite lifting his mouth from her neck, Fairbanks murmurs, “Care to help? I would see you properly.” 

She looks at the unlit torch sconce her fingers are wrapped around, then down at him, hesitant. “Are you sure?” 

His sound of agreement is buried in her throat, along with his teeth, and the choice is made for her as pleasure sparks bright and strong: mana flares, racing from heart to hand without a thought, and warm light blooms, shining russet on the brown locks hiding him from view. 

Instantly she is drunk on him, drunk on his request and his blithe _acceptance_ — the first she’s known from someone without magic of their own. Except, isn’t this some sort of magic? The way he makes her feel, brings her to life with teeth and tongue and hands, is a deep, dark witchcraft found in the heart of the woods where even hunters fear to tread. 

 _That’s it_. She pulls him up from his study of the marks he’s left, kissing him with enough heat to burn him into her heart. _I am bespelled._  

With a groan, he pulls himself away, kneeling at her feet like a queen of legend. The way his tongue caresses her name falls golden on her ears, sweet and pure, and his fingers curl over the already-undone belt of her leathers. 

He helps her step out of them, one foot at a time, and sits back on his heel. “ _Ma belle_ ,” he says, hands sliding up her thighs. “ _Putain que t’es belle_.” The first kiss, he presses to her calf. The second, to a knee. By the time he’s reached her thigh, Isera’s head has fallen back against the wall again, her hands buried in his hair. She manages not to jump when he slips higher, but the drag of his stubble across her skin prickles her flesh in a wave, sensation curling scorching fingers around her nerves at the slow stroke of his tongue. 

Before long, she’s trembling, fingers clenching around her handful of hair. To keep him there or keep her balance, she’s not sure, but when the first shockwaves ripple up her calves, she tugs sharply. Fairbanks is barely upright before he anchors her against the wall, one hand wrapping around her thigh and bringing it over his hip. Through his own leathers, he’s hard, hot against her. 

His chin is still slick with salt and musk, and the taste of herself on his tongue has her growling at the front of his leathers, the material shredding under her sparking fingers. To hell with unlacing, to hell with cloth and leather. She’ll send him a replacement from Skyhold, a dozen pair to replace this one, if only it means he’ll meet her skin for skin. 

Fairbanks tears himself from her mouth and grabs her hips, lifting her just enough to settle against her. “ _Oui?_ ” he asks, voice laced with a note that sends a shiver up her spine. If he grips any harder, she’ll have bruises the shape of his hands— and the thought makes her toes curl with possessive pleasure. They’d be hidden under clothes and leathers, but they’d be _hers_ , something to keep for herself like a secret among all the pieces that are lost to The Inquisitor. 

“Yes.” Isera locks her heels in place below his arse and arches, dragging her body upwards until his breath stutters and as he slips into her, slow, too fucking slow and still somehow perfect, she drags his mouth back to hers. He slaps one hand against the wall, flexing until he bottoms out inside her with a groan that she swallows greedily. 

Isera’s next few minutes blur into one wild whirlwind, surrounded by the feel of him, the taste of him, the way he breathes harsh beside her ear, endearments and curses given equal voice. Nothing in the world is more important than the way his tongue slicks across hers, than his hips driving her back into the rough wood slow and deep and so fucking perfect she almost can’t stand it. 

“Bed,” she manages to gasp against his mouth, completely unprepared for the way he simply wraps an arm around her and lifts her. His strength proclaims itself effortless with the action, in the way muscles ripple under skin, and Andraste or Creators or who the fuck ever bless him for wiping her mind clean of everything but the unholy need burning under her skin. 

They fall into the pile of furs masquerading as a bed, and even in this, his care is apparent: long arms brace them as they fall, his weight suspended above her until she settles. Fairbanks fairly dwarfs her, a full head taller and all together more broad, but with his arms caging her, his kiss gentle on her jaw, everything about him whispers safety. Security. 

Adoration. 

When he just hovers over her, eyes roving her features as if memorizing, Isera strokes his arm, smiling when he laces their fingers. “Please,” she murmurs. 

Slowly, Fairbanks closes the distance between them, his mouth meeting hers in a kiss so sweet, tears prickle along her lashes. With a smooth motion, he rolls them, hands steadying her in place as he kicks the last leg of his pants away and leans back against the wall. Breathless, something glittering in the back of his eyes that she has to look away from or be lost in, Isera follows his silent direction until she’s sheathed him again. 

“ _Prends-moi._ ” Though she doesn’t speak his native tongue, despite all of Josephine’s coaching, that whisper against her throat needs no translation, is the same in every language: _Take me._  

With his thumbs resting along the jut of her hips, his hands nearly span her waist, and she follows his guidance, letting him set their pace. It’s too slow— she wants, needs, _demands_ to ride faster, to take and take until she can keep him for herself. But his grip is firm and the curve of his mouth proves that he knows exactly how he’s driving her mad. Too slow, until the heat and tension pools low and heavy in her belly, until his hand slips lower, stroking between her slick folds with each roll of her hips— and the first wave of a climax crests and takes her completely by surprise, bowing her back with the force of it. 

“Yes, _bien,_ ” he breathes, drawing her back into a kiss she shudders and whines through. “ _Je t’appartiens._ ”

It should be ridiculous, how pliant and boneless she is in his arms, how easily he stretches them out and slides back into her. Her wrists trapped under his hands, hips pinned beneath his, Isera can’t even writhe when he dips his head and catches a nipple in his mouth. White hot shock zings through her when his teeth scrape against it, and the way she throws her head back and gasps startles a laugh out of him.

“How am I to be serious when you react like this, hm?” he asks, smiling against her mouth.

Her giggle stutters into a moan as he thrusts, driving her back into the furs. When he takes her again, some of the tenderness bleeds away. Under his hands, she burns to a fever pitch for a third time and it is all she can do not to scream through it, scooped hollow and bare with pleasure. Minutes or hours or centuries later, Fairbanks follows her over the edge, her name sighed across the line of her throat.

***

“You have to let go of my boot eventually, darling.”

Fairbanks curls his hand tighter around her ankle in response, a hint of a smile lurking around the corners of his eyes. “But if I let go,” he says, “then you, like all good dreams, will drift off into the sunlight.”

“Oh, I’m a dream, now, am I?” Isera keeps her voice light, but there’s a real sadness lurking underneath the words— the same sadness, it seems, that scratches a needle-thin line between his brows.

“The best.” Fairbanks’ voice is quiet, but she can hear him well enough over the sounds of the waking camp.

There’s nothing more to say as they dress, her sheepishly handing him a spare set of leathers dug from a crate in the corner. Between donning pieces of clothing, there are soft touches, caresses, each one a sort of farewell: her fingers, gentle on scratches down his side. His lips ghosting across a mark on her shoulder. And with that, some of the smug satisfaction returns to his face as he ties his hair back into a tail. He hesitates, though, with his hand on the door, and turns to her.

The request is unspoken, but after a night like last, hearing it is as natural as breath. Two paces and she crosses the small room; he tucks her against his chest like something precious, her head fitting in the curve of his shoulder as if she was made to be there. This is harder than she expected, this parting, and every part of her whispers that she should wrap herself around him and spend another day or five in bed.

“Once you open that door, the real world exists again,” she whispers; that truth curdles in her stomach. “The war, Corypheus. All of it.”

His eyes contain a world of understanding and he strokes her cheek with a knuckle. “It has always existed, _chérie._ We simply found escape for a time.”

Isera stands on her toes, face tilted towards his. _Once more,_ she asks silently, _for the road back to something I don’t want to be._

As if he hears her— hell, maybe he does; magic is wild at the best of times— Fairbanks lowers his mouth to hers. Where last night, fire ran liquid and heady through her veins at his touch, this kiss rolls through her, a centering and steadying warmth. And something else, a glimpse of what could be, what she didn’t know she wanted: This kiss is something she can see happening again and again, a hundred, a thousand times. Over dinner, before bed, after an argument.

After a war.

This kiss, she thinks, two mouths moving in perfect unison, is a spell of its own. Not quite love, not yet, but close, so close she can pretend it is. Hope wells up, a solid thrum beating in counterpoint to her heart, and for one perfect moment, the world just bows down and… stands still. All that exists, all that ever has existed or ever will exist is wrapped up right here, right now, in Fairbanks’ lips on hers. Motes of dust turn golden in the sunbeams splashing through the roof, and a touch— his thumb, her cheek— says a million more words than words ever could.

“ _Mon amour,_ ” he whispers, and it sounds like a confession, the way he brushes it with a kiss across her brow. And then he is gone, swallowed up into the great, green expanse of his small kingdom— and a piece of her goes with him.

***

“Inquisitor!”

“Herald! The Herald’s back!”

Behind the smile she wears for Thedas, Isera’s teeth clench until they ache. Something must give her away as they ride through the gates, because Dorian speeds up to reach her side, his knee brushing hers, loudly proclaiming his exhaustion. Under the arrogance he slips on like an Orlesian mask, though, is a love that roots them both together; the gestures, the touch, serves as grounding for them both. Such a simple thing, a small courtesy, to stab at the emotions whirling through her, but there it is.

She manages to get up the stairs and two steps into the almost-empty hall before the eastern door opens, and a pair of furred shoulders enters the room before the man bearing them does. Cullen’s face relaxes when he sees her, a dusky flush riding high on his cheeks as he approaches.

“I’m—” His hand goes for his neck and the flush deepens. “I’m glad you’ve returned safely. You were out of contact for a while there.”

Isera fixes her eyes on one of the mysterious golden plaques Cole keeps bringing her on their campaigns as Cullen stumbles over another excuse; it is easy, now, to tune him out. She catches the scarlet of Varric’s tunic, a little worse for wear lately, out of the corner of her eye, and she wonders if she should send for a replacement before he complains, again—

Until Cullen says her name.

His voice is cracked, almost, something hopeful waiting to spring forth. He takes a step forward, as if to reach for her, and all the fury Fairbanks’ kiss had soothed comes roaring back to the surface.

_Care to help? I would see you properly._

_You’re a mage. Can I ever trust you?_

He says her name again, fingers almost brushing her arm— and she jerks away from him, lightning arcing across the surface of her vambrace, startling them both. Distant under the sound of her roaring pulse, Varric swears, but doesn’t interfere. Cullen looks at her, brows furrowing, and the confusion on his face fans the blaze of anger higher. To hell with apologizing for what she is. Twenty years of choking down shame and apologies is too long, and if she’s going to be the face of Thedas, then she will be the face of _all_ Thedas, mages included. Let the Chantry spew its toxic shit about mages when their exalted hero wields magic easy as breath and twice as often.

And if it tries, well, she’s already taking on one god; why not another?

“You may call me Inquisitor,” Isera says, the chill in her voice manifesting as ice crystals spiraling out from her feet. “Or Herald.”

“Isera—”

“ _Inquisitor._ ” Ice covers the toes of his boots and Cullen’s expression blanks, whatever emotion he’d displayed disappearing behind the mask of professionalism. His shoulders fall and, after unsticking his left boot with a snap of ice, he steps back to a respectful distance, hands falling to his side. “We will debrief this evening, after I have bathed and had a moment to breathe. Good day to you, Commander.”

She’s almost to the door of her chambers, trying not to shake apart while he still watches, when she hears Varric say, “Shit. I think you lost that battle, Curly.” Whatever response Cullen gives, if any, is lost in the swinging wooden door and the crisp mountain air that blows across the top of her stairs.

No expense is spared for the chambers of The Inquisitor: plush Orlesian rugs cover her floor, furniture from all over their allies’ territories, and imports from more countries and cities than she can name adorn the room and its furnishings— and still, she would trade it all without hesitation for five more minutes in a crumbling shack in the middle of a forest.

Leliana’s raven— well, she still thinks of him as Leliana’s, but he’s been gifted to her— perches on the desk and caws at her. When she sits, he hops to her shoulder, fluttering his wings twice for balance, and nibbles a curl of her hair as she rifles through the less-important correspondence that doesn’t reach her in the field. After four letters, two invitations, and a rather saucy proposition from an ambassador that she sets aside to scandalize Josie with, she finds a small, battered package at the bottom of the pile. It warms in her hands and the smell of tree resin and green growing things surrounds her.

If her fingers tremble when she breaks the wax seal, she’ll never admit it. And if she chokes on a breath when something falls from the parchment and clunks on the desk, well. There’s no one here but her and the bird to see it.

 _Mon étoile,_ she reads, and has to remember how to breathe for a minute before continuing.

 _Your steps have been missing amongst the trees here for just over a fortnight, and already, it is too long._ _The Graves seem dim without your light_ _._

 _The journey to Skyhold is long, and I_ _know that you will stop countless times to help the people you take under the Inquisition’s wing_ _, so I_ _also_ _know you will not get this besotted fool’s letter until long after it is sent. But send it I shall:_

_I look for you here, sometimes. A flash of silver, a smile shaped like yours, and I turn, hoping to see you standing, waiting, returned. A foolish dream, no? More hearts than mine rest in your hands, and we each serve our people, and at their pleasure._

_Your decision to entrust me with Clara’s proof is appreciated, though I can suspect what your ambassador will say; your agents report that the Lady Montilyet is clever and dangerous with words and n_ _ot capitalizing on an ally’s ties is sure to be a disappointment worthy of a few._

_Nobility is a gilded cage, entrapment woven out of niceties and politics, and it is a cage I would not lightly consider— or rest easy in. So to you I will entrust another secret. If you ask it of me, if you require my service in such a manner, it is a cage I will abide. I will smile and say it is for Thedas, for the Inquisition, for my country and my people. But you, and I, will know the truth._

_Perhaps, after the war, if we both still stand… No. That is a fool’s wish, and not a burden I will place on you. Suffice to say that I hope to see you again. The enclosed is a token of my affection;_ _both are_ _yours to do with as you will._

_Yours,_

_Evariste Lemarque_

***

“Well, not the story I thought would happen,” Varric says, dealing from a battered deck of cards that still manages to smell like the Hanged Man and brings a note of home, even if it is sour ale and questionable odors. “But not a bad one.”

He slants his eyes to Dorian, then again to Iron Bull, both studying their hands too intensely to be genuine. Dorian tosses out a dagger and a sacrificial knight, and Bull snorts back his laughter— and a good splash of his ale. “That’s not a real hand, Vint,” he says, eyes watering, “but I’ll see it.”

“That,” Dorian drawls, flourishing the rest of his hand, “is the story Varric is talking oh, so subtly about.” He stares at the rose knight and angel of charity Bull plays opposite his hand and a soft, fond smile touches his mouth.

Varric loses interest in their bickering and turns his head, because who has time to be subtle, to check on the kid and Her Inquisitorialness in the corner. The Chargers are piled to a man in the booth, spilling out in a jumbled heap on the floor, and trading stories, trying to outdo the others by making enough racket for a whole quarter of Lowtown. The kid’s listening, wide eyes moving from one soldier to the next in that curious, too-seeing way of his, even as Dalish patiently corrects the way he holds the cards he isn’t playing. And Isera…

Isera is hundreds of miles away, he figures, based on the slight curve of her mouth, and the way her thumb toys with something under her sleeve.

 _Not a bad one at all,_ he thinks, exhaling. Not that he isn’t going to do some of his own digging, but for now she’s happy and the vigilante seems decent enough. He can wait a while longer before calling in favors. So he sits back, watching without being seen, smiling a little at the world, and deals another hand to kill some more time.


	2. Up the Winding Path

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The crowd has gone silent, or fallen back, or disappeared for all he knows. Or cares. Everything in his world narrows down to the woman walking towards him._
> 
> _For months, he’s thought about what to say to her, at least as often as his practical side hissed that she has bigger worries. How he’d sweep in and fall to his knees, how he’d declare his love. For months, memories and fantasies and almost-promises put on parchment consumed more and more of his heart, until her absence became unbearable. But with her standing in front of him, brows pulled together and her shoulders squared against whatever his presence means…_
> 
> _“I had to find you,” he whispers, every ounce of truth he has in those five words._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm going to go ahead and TW this chapter for violence. i'm also going to mark it complete for now; i plan on a third chapter eventually, that will be the conclusion of the smut arc, but the original plan had been for two.
> 
> ...well, the original original plan had been for this to be a fun, smutty one shot. then it insisted on growing a plot.

**AU Prompt:** What if Isera and Cullen never managed to overcome their demons and she found a lover elsewhere?

**Rating:** Preparing for more filthy smut, so 18+  
**Pair:** Quiz/Fairbanks  
**Tags:** angst, angst and smut, hurt/comfort, sex, romance, falling in love, angst with a happy ending, look i have a lot of feelings okay, i did not expect this to become a real au, i did not expect to fall in love with the idea of french robin hood and elf superwoman falling in love

***  
*** 

When Fairbanks finds the storm-felled branch a week after the Inquisition’s departure, his first thought is about firewood and survival.

The thick branches of the trees in the Graves take days to dry out enough to use, but even a small branch makes for a week’s worth of firewood— and this is not a small branch. Argon’s Lodge has enough stored wood to stay warm and cook while this dries out, especially if the mages who stumbled into camp two days ago are willing to help.

The second thought, as he measures the width of the branch with his hands, is of the Inquisitor, and the ache in his heart that she has nothing tangible to remember him by. Creamy wood parts around the axes of his men, and an idea forms. An overly-romantic idea, but an idea nonetheless.

“Save me a slice of the thin end, yes? The gnarled bit?” he asks, swinging the hatchet with enough force to send splinters flying. It takes a crew of four men, plus himself, most of the day to break the wood down into pieces they can haul, but the aching muscles and dirty hands are worth it to have the security the wood will provide. Slow though it is, the survivors of Celene’s war are digging their heels in and scratching out a real life here.

Two days later, a disk of greenwood smokes as he hollows it out with a coal and a searing knife, the shape of a bracelet emerging from the gnarl. Years have passed since he last carved anything, but the simple evening work, when the camp is settling and laughter rolls through his people like waves soft on the shore, is soothing in its own way. Shavings accumulate at his feet as his hands work, a half-forgotten song on his lips. More than once, he catches Gertrude watching him with a smile, something like approval on her face.

It takes another week before Fairbanks is satisfied, spending more time frowning at the wood than actually carving it, but at last concedes he is finished. The outer, almost-black bark of the greenwood remains smooth to the touch stark contrast to the pearlescent wood carefully shaped into vines. There are few flowers, but branches and leaves wind around and through themselves to form the arc; the curling vines remind him of the tattoos wreathing Isera’s body, those serpentine, forking paths he traced with tongue and touch.

A greenwood bracelet for a woman who wears a forest on her skin; it’s either the best idea in the world, or she’ll laugh hard enough he will hear it echoing down from the Frostbacks.

There is little on his mind beyond giving the package, complete with a letter that says too much, to an Inquisition scout. As it changes hands and the name on it is read, the scout barely manages to keep the smile twitching her mouth from blooming in full. After, though, the nerves set in, and Fairbanks can’t keep his mind from going over and over the decision he’s made. In Orlais, a gift hewn of wood and affection would be, at best, stored in a trinket box, at least among the nobility. It would be considered a small thing, not at all something to put much stock in. But, somehow, Isera doesn’t strike him as a woman who disregards small gestures. And that makes him wonder.

He doesn’t know much about the Dalish; few of the Plains clans venture this way, unless they are singing dirges and carrying dead, so there has never been an appropriate time to approach them. But a people without much in the way of finery, as humans would view it, or much in the way of possessions at all, might have a rather different view of such a gift. He wonders now, as he should have before, if his token might be considered too grand— or a request for something he’s not even admitting to himself he might want. He’s never really considered life beyond the refugees, but now…

When his thoughts go down that path, Fairbanks curses his sentimental heart. He’d only wanted— well. To think she might not forget him with ease. And even if, in the dark hours of the night, he wishes she were here and wonders if sharing a life with her would even be possible, it wasn’t his intention to make such a bold statement: so much pressure on someone after a few weeks’ worth of not-so-secret admiration and one night that blew his heart right open could strangle any true relationship between them before it has a chance to breathe.

Still. When the moon is full and the leaves of the trees glow silver, when he sits by the large fire and remembers the cast of her features against the glowing embers… Strange, how time marches on when all you would do is catch it between your hands. Stranger still how a memory feels real and alive against the skin when the events are long past. With his mind drifting on memory’s eddies, he still feels her beneath his hands, tastes her on his tongue. Her skin burnished gold by torchlight, hair gilded as she arches above him, his name spilling from her mouth like blessings from the Lady herself.

Not, he amends quickly, that he’s ever had such carnal thoughts about Andraste.

Just her prophet, it seems.

***

With a jolt, Fairbanks sits upright, the sweat on his skin chilling in the autumn air. For a moment, he could have sworn… It was as if Isera had been right next to him, curled against his side like she’d always been there. From the scant light of the waning moons, night still cloaks the forest, and everyone but the patrols are sleeping.

Unlike him—waking in the dead of night is becoming an unfortunate, and tiresome, habit.

Fairbanks rolls to his side, adjusting his arm with a grumpy sigh. He _misses_ her. The Inquisitor, with that cold stare that strips a man to the bone and makes him want to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness, hides a woman yearning for something real to hold fast to. Her holy titles are as much armor as the leather and chain that protect her in battle, but now he’s seen beneath it. He’s seen under the prophet, the mundane under the divine— and the sight doesn’t go away. Awake or asleep, alone or surrounded by dozens of his people, she’s always there haunting the back of his mind.

Orlais writes some of the world’s most renowned, retold romances. And Orlesians are in love with the idea of being in love, romanticizing the agony and endless waves of feeling; it gets prettied up, painted with words that have no hope of capturing the terrible beauty and pain of it all.

Fairbanks knows better now: it is enough to drive a man to drink, this madness, this fever in his blood.

Remembering her here, in his bed, does absolutely nothing for his predicament. There are times he wakes, body hard and tight and desperate. He wakes from filthy, fantastic dreams, convinced that if he reaches to his side, his hand will touch sweat-slick flesh, will hear that low, Dalish voice murmur his name. And when he isn’t dreaming in sin, he dreams impossible things fueled by a handful of memories and too many fantasies: dreams of waking to the dawn kissing the curve of her shoulder, of her curls snarled by a long night not spent sleeping.

Of sharing his mornings, his afternoons, his _life_ , with her.

_No promises,_ they agreed. Fairbanks has his people, a growing population of refugees in every age and condition to provide for. And Isera is The Inquisitor— her steps shake the world, however much she hates it. No promises, but Andraste forgive him, he wishes he’d asked for them. Had offered them. His luck that some fool let her slip through their fingers, didn’t realize the treasure that had landed in them— and his own foolishness that sent her off with nothing but unspoken confessions and love bites she wore with pride.

He hopes the package arrives safely. Here, in the bed he wishes she was in, he can admit that it contains far more than a mere trinket. As he drags himself out of the furs, the truth of his predicament hits him hard and fast, like a fist to his gut:

He’s fallen for the savior of the world. Hard.

“ _Merde,_ ” he growls, throwing his pillow across the room. Dust swirls through the dappled beams, his patchy roof playing tricks with the light. And he swears again, softer, scrubbing his hands down his face. “ _Je suis foutu_.”

***

For weeks, he clomps around the camp, locked in a vicious cycle of self-doubt and berating, waiting for word, for rejection. For something impossible to happen. At every bird that flies overhead, he whips his head around to look. Inquisition scouts are in and out of the camp, trading and bringing news, but asking one of them if their Lady is sighing over him still would be the height of foolishness. So the days pass, Fairbanks pacing circles around the camp, restless and heartsick.

Until the day he is so intent on the pretense of patience, he almost misses the scout lurking by Gertrude’s stand filling a bag with goods and gossip. It is only Gertrude’s delighted laughter that catches his attention, and then the scout’s face lights up in recognition.

“ _Monsieur!_ ” he calls, a vast and unsubtle smile crinkling his eyes. “Letters from Skyhold.”

Breath held in his throat, Fairbanks takes them with a hand kept from shaking by sheer force of will and deposits them on his bed. The small bundle weighs heavy on the back of his mind as the day progresses, consuming more and more of his thoughts as work progresses and the encampment turns a little more from ruin to respectable. When he isn’t consumed with thoughts of the Inquisitor, there is a soft, glowing pride at what they’ve accomplished, turning the dilapidated shacks into something resembling a village proper.

Still, when the work blurs out into a swirl of color and sound, when the competence of his people takes the burden of command from him for short periods, his thoughts turn to the woman with sun-gold skin and hair the color of moonlight. If he closes his eyes, he feels the shape of that thin, expressive mouth against his; the way curses and laughter and soft, silken words tumble from them at the gentlest caress. The smatter of dark freckles that taste like sunshine and devotion under his mouth, a memory so real, he aches—

Until, of course, he misses the nail he’s holding and drives the hammer right into his unprotected hand.

“ _Putain,_ ” he swears, dropping hammer and nail to the grass and sticking his thumb in his mouth. When one speaks of heartache, he thinks waspishly, it shouldn’t be any kind of _literal_ ache.

“Are you all right?” Clara asks, setting her own hammer aside and wiping her brow. There’s something amused in her expression as she takes his hand, examining it with care, that he chooses to ignore. The world laughs at him enough right now, evidenced by his swelling hand; he doesn’t need to know his people are laughing, too. “Nothing broken. Just a bruise.”

He grumbles, reaching for the dropped tool, when she lays a hand on his shoulder. When he looks at her, there is something kind and knowing in the way she smiles at him.

“You should read your letters, Fairbanks,” she says softly. “It’s no secret that you’re distracted.”

He doesn’t know whether to be ashamed that he’s so obvious, or grateful that his people care so much for him, but he nods, holding his throbbing hand as he slips into his room and shuts the door. Now that he’s there, though, he hesitates. Surely a rejection wouldn’t merit more than one letter, but there are at least three, each sealed with gold wax and stamped with the sword of the Inquisition.

It’s tempting to leave them there, tied in an innocent bundle. If he never opens them, Fairbanks reasons, then the only bruise on his heart will be her departure. Given time, he’s almost positive that the memory of her will fade and leave him in peace. If he does open them, though, to find her rejection, or worse, her shame… It has been years since his heartbeat echoed with someone’s name. And never quite like this, never quite so strong and immediate.

But there’s always the chance that she hasn’t written a rejection, too, isn’t there? And he’ll never know unless he musters the courage to find out.

“ _Coward,_ ” he hisses, forcing his hand to close over the bundle. It still takes another few minutes before he can open one, peeling the sealing wax up with a nail.

Her penmanship is crisp and fluid, obviously the result of long practice. Whether his imagination or wishful thinking, he swears there’s a soft, sweet scent rising from the paper, but it is a distant observation as his mind fills with Isera’s words.

_Evariste,_

_I am touched beyond words at your gift, and at your confession. It was received with some relief, if I am honest: I was afraid that I was the only one having such thoughts. To find that you, also, feel something between us beyond the magic of starlight and sweet words… well. There may have been a bout or two of daydreaming, but I’ll never admit it out loud._

_My heart aches at the piece of the Emerald Graves you’ve sent, to know that you might understand what my time in the Graves meant._

And there, he must stop for a moment, because he really hadn’t. He knew that Isera was Dalish— in defiance of the Chantry, perhaps, she takes pains not to hide the lilt in her voice, refuses to cover her extensive _vallaslin_. But despite knowing the history of his homeland’s crimes against the Dalish, he hadn’t put the two pieces together. They’d simply existed side by side in his mind, disconnected and separate.

Now that she’s mentioned it, though, several things fall into place with an almost audible click: the way she stared out at the dense woods, hands lingering on every tree or stone she touched. Found excuses to venture out of the canyon, out of the camp, almost jumped at the opportunity to route more Freemen from their vipers’ nests. He’d overheard the Tevinter mage speaking quietly to her about a tomb and a missing band of explorers with her head bowed, hand pressed to her mouth. At the time, he’d thought it was an unwanted discovery, or simple exhaustion. Looking back, he wonders if she’d been hiding tears.

And he knows, then, that he can never again call the Emerald Graves ‘his’ forest. That he never should have in the first place.

_To have a piece of my ancestors’ homeland,_ she writes, and he can almost hear her voice dropping to an emotional murmur, _and a piece of you that I can keep with me… my heart is so full, there are no words for it._

_I have only a few moments before another endless council meeting, and in case this missive falls into the wrong hands, I dare not reveal our next moves. But I wanted to respond, to thank you._

_And to say that, yes, maybe if we both still stand at the end._

_Dareth shiral,  
_ _Isera_

***

Fairbanks is not a man who takes religion lightly. He never has, not as a child and not now, as a man, even if he spent a few years in between shaking his fist at the sky. Since a silver-haired warrior strode through the Graves and took his heart right from his chest, he finds himself looking to the sky again, the Chant of Light a little more devout on his lips as it hasn’t been in a while. In renewed piety, though, comes a frizzle of something else: a fear, a shadow, slithering through the dark recesses of his mind.

The world is rarely kind to prophets, or to people who bring change. And Isera is both.

Instincts have kept him alive as much as attentiveness and survival skill. So when he feels that tendril of warning skulking through the forest, leaving a trail that almost screams _something isn’t right_ , he listens.

Despite Isera’s cleansing, there is still the occasional skirmish to handle. The Freemen of the Dales are losing numbers and ground, and each time they cross swords, there are fewer of them to handle next time. That the days between fighting grow longer isn’t much of a surprise. What is a surprise, though, is that Villa Maurel has been deserted. That only the remains of red lyrium transports linger, cages empty. There is an unsettling silence descending through the Graves, whispering safety to his people— and danger to him.

Fairbanks knows that something is pulling them away from the area, and even if it means that his people are happier, full and content and daring to feel safe for a while, he keeps a weather eye out. Later, he will count this silence as the first sign that something is wrong, even after he holds another treasured letter from Skyhold. Each one has become less formal, warmer, and the one in his hands now is the warmest yet.

Isera’s words ring with exhaustion, but underneath is the same warrior that he’d seen in her stride, felt in the whipcord muscle under his hands:

_The Red Templars have scattered,_ she writes, and there is a fine tremble in the line of the letters that grabs his heart and squeezes. _Though Corypheus has demonstrated a frightening new ability we’re hard-pressed to fight against. But, one way or another, it will be over soon._

_I miss you,_ he reads, and the parchment shivers in his hand. They’ve still exchanged no promises of love, but the word hovers just out of sight. There is no doubt in Fairbanks’ mind how he feels, what he wants, but as long as the world rests between her hands, the burden of his longing should not.

_There are days I sit here, doing the paperwork Josephine seems to conjure up overnight— far more writing than I’d have assumed I’d be doing— and I think of you. Of how much I want to see you again. The peace of the Dales is something I crave almost bodily. To be among wood and green things instead of these half-frozen stone walls. Skyhold has become a home of sorts, but there’s no comparison._

_We’ve just returned from the Arbor Wilds, and already, I want to go back. Such things we saw there._

_I still wear your gift. I’ve even let Dorian and Varric see it, the nosy bastards._ He laughs at the indignation he can almost hear, warm from head to toe with her possessiveness. _Varric says he’ll write it into the biography. I, of course, had no choice but to threaten to burn every copy if he did. We are currently at an impasse, the dwarf and I: he threatened to bring Hawke into the discussion. I think we both wait for a lowering of the other’s guard before we strike._

_Stay strong out there. And know my thoughts and heart are with you._

_Isera_

_***_

It hits Fairbanks one morning with a terrible, cold clarity, that he cannot serve Isera as he is.

Admitted aloud or on paper or denied in the most secret spaces of his heart, his fantasies as they stand— being a partner to her, following her on the quest to restore Thedas, someday standing tall and proud at her side— are foolish. To build past where they are, he will need more than fantasies and romantic words penned in the dark: he will need to go to her, and put this entanglement to the test. But he knows too well the strict standards public figures are held to, even without them saving the world. And Isera herself knows well that there are too many masks to juggle, and somehow, it doesn’t occur to the masses that behind their symbol is someone who needs a life of their own.

He thinks back to the whispers surrounding the Ferelden king, Alistair, who also saved the world during the Fifth Blight— and got nothing but trouble for his efforts for years after. No matter that he married the Queen Regent, Anora mac Tir; no matter that after years of trying, there is finally a Theirin heir other than Alistair himself. No matter that Warden Surana has slipped away into the wilds, content to be a fading myth with her Crow husband. The rumors still persisted that the King kept an elven mistress, that he and Surana maintained a relationship outside of their respective marital bonds. If he’s not careful, the cautious dance Isera and the Inquisition have been weaving through the political landscape of Thedas would be fouled by the intrusion of a vigilante with no social standing.

And when he is honest with himself, staring into the velvety darkness curling around the forest, he sees an echo of Isera’s schism of self in his own heart.

For years, Fairbanks was only that: Fairbanks, protector of the Dales. Fairbanks, guard of the refugees. Fairbanks, folk hero. The man who had once been Evariste Lemarque slept under his assumed title, free and safe from the Game; he’d learned early on that his steps were too clumsy, too easily traced, when compared to the other dancers and players in the courts. Evariste’s heart was too… soft, for such a dangerous game. People are not tokens to be used and discarded at a whim, and unlike his noble fellows, that detachment never rooted in him. How ironic, then, that after finally silencing that soft, young part of his heart, it would come back at the beckon of tired eyes and a mouth made for kissing. In his heart, Evariste stirs and stretches, restless and looking for a way, an excuse, anything to be with Isera again.

It isn’t until he stumbles over his grandfather’s portrait that the answer comes to him. Painfully.

Isera entrusted him with Clara’s proof months ago. A locket, a portrait, and an old journal isn’t much to go on, but Clara thought it would be proof enough for the Council of Heralds. Perhaps she is right. And so that night, before he can talk himself out of it, he pens a letter to Ambassador Montilyet outlining his thought and request, and bundles the proof up for delivery the next morning. Half a dozen times, he thinks about snatching the package back and burying it in the deepest place he can find in the Dales, but each time his hand trembles, he remembers the expression on Isera’s face as she talked about struggling to hold on to herself.

As when he sent his first letter to Isera, Fairbanks paces across the camp, restless and nervous. But not as much as he’d expected. If the proof isn’t enough, then… well, he’ll be spared from returning to the courts, but he’ll have to find another way to be with Isera. Either way, some of the indecision has lifted from his shoulders, and he will have an idea of the path to take.

Eventually, he does get a reply. An Inquisition scout comes jogging up to him as he’s about to lead a hunting group and tucks a small package into his bag before saluting. Argon’s Lodge is well aware of the strange romance going on between Fairbanks and Isera, so waving off the delivery as nothing important is easy enough. He allows himself to forget about it, losing himself in the challenge of the hunt, until they return with two bucks and a doe.

Then, as the hunters relax into preparing the meat, Fairbanks slips into his room and opens the package with shaking hands.

_Monsieur Lemarque,_

_I admit, I was surprised at your request. When Inquisitor Lavellan told me she’d given the proof of your bloodline to you, I assumed you’d keep it buried. The Lady indicated you wanted nothing to do with the nobility and were content with your work in the Dales. So I won’t ask why you request that I not divulge your letter to her, but I passed on your letters to the Council of Heralds. This morning, I received a reply._

_While it’s certainly an unusual way to back up claims of nobility, the Council has ruled in favor of your heritage. Congratulations, monsieur. You are now recognized as Lord Evariste, Comte de Lemarque and sole living heir of Lord Giroux. Enclosed is the deed to the Lemarque ancestral estates, as well as Lord Giroux’s locket and a mark of safe passage. The rest of your possessions may be kept in safety and trust with the Inquisition, or we can have it returned to you or a place of your choosing._

_On behalf of the Inquisition,_

_Ambassador Josephine Montilyet_

A postscript at the bottom reads: _I may not have Sister Leliana’s nose for intrigue, but I know a plan when one is presented to me. And you, monsieur, have a plan. I’ll keep your secret from Inquisitor Lavellan. For now._

Though the Ambassador isn’t Orlesian, and therefore doesn’t play the Game, she writes her gentle warnings between the lines clearly enough: _Don’t make me regret it._

***

What he comes to think of as the second sign of danger comes two days after Isera’s latest letter. The peace of the morning shatters as a runner, a boy no more than twelve, bursts into the camp, splattered with mud, specks of leaves— and something dark and red that Fairbanks knows all too well.

Fairbanks nearly collides with Gertrude in his haste to get to the sobbing boy. He manages to get his hands on the boys’ shoulders, kneeling down to his level, as the rest of the camp circles uneasily in the common area.

“Calm down, _fiston_ ,” he murmurs, voice low and soothing. “Tell me what you saw.”

The calm words seem to get through, and with a couple of hitching sobs, the boy straightens up and scrubs at the clean paths streaking through the grime on his face. “Halla. Near Gracevine.” He sniffles again, lip quivering as he sees the blood on his sleeve. The way his face pales is a warning of what they can expect, and without comment, Fairbanks passes the boy to Gertrude, who leads him away murmuring comforting nothings.

For a moment, he wishes there was someone to give him that false security, to tell him that it’s nothing— but there isn’t. A wounded halla is definitely not _nothing_ , considering how rarely they find their way down into the Graves. And his instincts, that always-aware piece of him, hammer at him to run run _run._ So instead, he nods at three of his men, gathering up a patrol and arms in short order. The boy’s trail is easy enough to find, panic bludgeoning a path a blind nug could follow, and at the end of it—

“ _Merde_ ,” one of the men whispers, the back of his hand rising to his mouth.

The halla lies among a tumble of ruins and rocks, moss covered and ancient, like a star fallen to the ground. Her white coat blazes in the midday sun, so searingly bright it leaves afterimages in the eye. Leaves and vines thread through her curling horns as testament to her wild thrashing— but it is the blood on her coat, that startling, sickening crimson running through her fur, that prickles the back of his neck.

There is an arrow in her haunch, and those big, black eyes roll with fear as he rests a hand on her shivering, sweat-soaked flank to inspect the damage. As he gets closer and notes other wounds, anger burns in his heart: someone has hamstrung the doe, both back tendons slashed brutal and gaping. That is bad enough, but it is the gash across her throat that will kill her, and soon. There is nothing he can do for her now; even if he were to try and hasten her end, it would be senseless. An arrow to the brain, or decapitation, still takes a moment for the body to fully die, and she has maybe that left anyway. It is a grotesque miracle of sorts that she still has a few fading moments of consciousness, even with the mad dash it took to get here, and the only thing he can offer her is the grace of not dying alone.

“Fairbanks, what do we do? How did she even get here?” Gerard asks, hushed in the stillness. “Halla don’t come this far.”

Something about the silence surrounding them bothers him, but he can’t pinpoint it, not while she suffers and bleats in distress.

“We stay with her,” Fairbanks murmurs, keep his voice low. “It’s all we can do.”

The halla’s labored breathing is the loudest thing in the area, slowly quieting as the blood loss overcomes her. “Shh, sweetheart,” he croons, stroking her muzzle. “ _Ça va aller_.”

Dark, ancient eyes stare into his as her breath goes shallow, and his chest tightens. In the letters that come his way on dark wings and hopes bright as the sun, Isera sometimes talks about the halla. About their peace, and their innocence, about the respect the Dalish have for their companions. Never pets, never beasts of burden, but partners. He sees the magic in them, the _grace_ , of a majestic creature, and the white hot shock of pain at seeing one brought so low.

For a second, he swears that he feels another mind brush against his, frightened and wild-shy. Thin as spider silk, the freedom of the open Plains stretches out in front of him, promising sweet grass and gentle waters. Members of the herd bleat somewhere ahead, unseen but comforting, and sun-warm winds blow across his face, full of scent, as the ground flies under his hooves—  

And then she is gone. The spell broken, the impressions fading as fast as they came, that gentle mind slips from his. Tears blur his vision of her, and he lays his head on her withers, weeping for her loss. There is something impossibly heartbreaking about the doe’s death, something unnatural pinging a warning beneath the sorrow— and when the shuffling of Alain’s feet is the loudest sound for a hundred or more feet, he remembers why silence in this forest is trouble.

“Fan out,” he orders, wiping at his face. “Something is here that does not belong.”

An hour’s patrol reveals nothing more than a bloody knife and crushed vines where the murderer crouched, watching them mourn for innocence lost, and as they return to camp, his mind is made up. He gives the order for taking care of the doe’s body and increases patrols in case of more trouble, and strides to his room blindly, unable to see past the memory of bloodied silver-white fur. It’s too easy to imagine the blood creeping up the twist of curls the same color, that the fading eyes are green instead of dark.

“You’re going after her, aren’t you?” Clara’s voice is hardly more than a whisper, and he turns to see her framed by sunlight and shadow in his doorframe. “The Inquisitor, I mean.”

“I—” What can he tell her? Lying is a disservice, and the truth… He will run from the truth no longer: he is the Inquisitor’s, body and soul, if she will have him. “Yes,” he finally says.

She studies him, hazel eyes narrowed in the bright light. “Good,” she says at last, giving him a brilliant, if shaky, smile. “You’ll be needing these, then.” In her hand is a pair of saddlebags, and as he takes them, he brushes a friendly kiss across her cheek.

This was a message, a _warning_ — and chilled to the bone, Fairbanks spends his time stuffing the bags with essentials, rations, and leathers. After a moment’s thought, he adds medical and triage supplies. He’s been sent two warnings, by chance or providence; waiting for a third is foolishness. The memory of the halla’s eyes looking into his, seeing past his face and straight down into his heart, surfaces and he shivers. Whatever is happening, whatever is coming over the hill towards her, he must reach Isera.

Under the guidance of whatever force drives him, Fairbanks stumbles across the last of the Inquisition forces on march back to Skyhold from the Arbor Wilds and, after some intense arguing and a blatant bribe of Antivan brandy, he falls into rank. The song of Isera’s army is loud and strong, ringing with conviction, pride, and the sound of it is a balm on his heart. Here is protection for his love, strength for her to fall back on.

Here he is, among those who belong to her, as he ought to be.

***

They are still over a day shy of Skyhold when the wind changes direction and begins to howl. Their pace has been slower— these are those wounded in the Wilds, and care has been taken with their well-being. But as he watches, these soldiers to a man slow, then stop, looking at the sky as it rolls with dark, ominous clouds. Unease sweeps through them as the edges of the Breach glow sickly green, and crackle with lightning that arcs to the ground even as they watch.

There is a single moment of deadly, awful silence, as if the whole of the world has taken a breath— and then the sky breaks open for the first time in two years. Shrieks of demons and nightmare monsters rend the air, clear even through the thunder and crash of Fade comets falling to the earth like a mockery of stars. Swords ring all around him as they are drawn from their scabbards, cries for arrows passed back. Low hums of barriers rising and settling over anyone near a mage fill the gaps under the frenzied music of soldiers preparing for war.

And under it all, he swears there is a woman’s agonized cry.

“Isera,” he whispers, clutching his mark of safe passage.

“Move!” The captain shouts to be heard over the storm, and the army doubles in speed, surging up the mountain path in a wave. With numb fingers, Fairbanks draws his own sword, and the world seems to slow around him. The first demon he finds is a spindly terror, a monstrous thing with too many eyes and limbs that bend unnaturally. It springs from the ground, stretching a terrible claw towards a mage straining under a too-large barrier. His sword keens through the air before he makes a conscious decision to move.

The creature slaps him to the ground with a dull, meaty thump, wicked claws cutting through his leathers with ease as it jumps him from place to place. After a brief but violent struggle, the shocked mage he’d protected throws an ice spell, cementing the thing’s feet. Fairbanks frees a dagger up his now-torn sleeve to slam into its face up to the hilt. With a screech, it disappears in a blast of Fadelight.

The next demon rises from ground bubbling with green light, a despair demon. Isera’s warnings ring through his head as he draws his second dagger, and he calls to the mage over his shoulder, “Fire!” Both blades burst into flame a moment later and he smiles, a savage, fierce thing as the demon’s powers batter at his mind. “ _Prends garde!_ ”

Now that the battle flows around him, there is no time for fear. Despair howls in his ear, scrabbling for a chink in his armor, but there’s no time for that, either. Time itself spins onward, slowing and speeding in gaps: here, his flaming blade slashing at a face with too many mouths; there, skidding across ice-slick grass to knock a terror from its feet. How long they battle, he isn’t sure, but when the last demon explodes into wisps, the shout of victory is more like a collective groan.

Soldiers sprawl, exhausted, in the grass, laughing quietly to themselves about their renewed love of life. There is a breathlessness, a thrill unlike any other, at having stared down death and come out the other side. This battle has cost them no undue lives, and even the most injured of the Wilds soldiers have come through whole.

The second time they are attacked, less than a mile past their first battle, two soldiers fall. Momentum is still on their side as they fight their way through. Beyond pockets of battle, the night is still as death around them, and one wave of demons fades into another.

By the fifth attack, the mage Fairbanks has been shadowing takes a terror claw to the gut, his lifeless body flung out of sight. All around him soldiers breathe their last, some in great, heaving gasps, some in shouts of defiance; the worst are those whose eyes are clouded by impending death long enough to steal their sense, leaving them calling for their mothers or fathers or lovers. Demons fall side by side with their own troops, and ichor and blood splatter together across the snow, colorful as it is sickening.

The soldiers keep fighting, though, brandishing torches and ichor-etched steel— and now Fairbanks knows what Isera meant that first night when she spoke of a hollow heart forced to keep beating. He’s courted this feeling before, in seeing children fall beneath Freemen, seeing his people sicken from the taint of the lyrium dogging the forest. But never has it bloomed so fully in his chest that he fights for air even as he staggers on numb feet and weary horror. Of their original number, perhaps a third is left, and each enemy they face whittles them leaner.

By the time Fairbanks and the straggling company burst through the treeline, dawn paints the tops of the Frostbacks a soft golden-rose color. He has time to say a quick prayer for Andraste to watch over her chosen, whatever comes her way. Then the ground under their feet begins to shake, throwing several of them off balance— and a bright beam of light shoots upward, roaring into the gaping maw of the Breach.

With a clap thunder and a ripple of clouds that skitter across the sky like frightened animals, the tear in the Veil slams shut.

The soldiers around him, weary though they are, let loose a cheer— raw, primal sounds that speak less of celebration and more of sheer survival. _We made it,_ the cry says. _We’re still alive._ Fairbanks doesn’t begrudge them their relief, this company of men who have fallen under his command by accident and circumstance. But in his heart, there’s nothing beyond cold dread. The Breach is sealed, and for good, by the looks of the gently flickering scar in the sky…

But at what cost?

***

After two days of fighting the wind-whipped snow that cloaks the Frostback peaks, at last Skyhold is in sight.

The company marching behind him is full of tired, injured fighters, but they still chatter amongst themselves. Food ran out hours before, and they march on empty bellies, some dropping handfuls of snow into their mouths out of desperate thirst. Fatigue puts a stumble in their steps, but they still go with purpose, confident now of their ability to survive. Safety lies over one last mountain side, across the glacier, and up the winding path to the Inquisition.

And yet, the closer Skyhold gets, the more he has half a mind to turn back to the forests and bury Evariste Lemarque so deep under Fairbanks that he sleeps all the rest of his years. Fairbanks is a vigilante, a leader among men, who stalks through the soft shadows of the Emerald Graves. He cares for his people, for defeating enemies of Orlais and those would who prey on the weak, and nothing more. There is no shining warrior-goddess that haunts his thoughts, no distant lover to distract him from his lifelong work. There is only the woods and the Lodge and his sworn duty to them both.

But Evariste… Evariste blurs that line, unfolds softer and frailer than Fairbanks. He fell in love with the divine, reached too far for the brush of a golden hand to absolve his sins. Evariste found salvation in the warmth of someone’s skin and walked without a thought from the Dales for the Inquisitor, would take up the mantle of his hidden nobility and lay it at her feet in offering. The Lodge is but a distant thought with the safety of his people shared well between Clara and Gertrude; Isera is a burning fire in his blood, driving his every move and pulling him towards her like one of those new magnetic curiosities at the University of Orlais.

And he has no idea if she’s even alive.

Whether due to the winds, or to the lost forces, or to some other unknowable factor, there have been no ravens announcing victory or defeat. In fact, Fairbanks hasn’t seen any trace of Inquisition encampment in the woods at all. No hidden scouts, no bodies, even. Only the cold, unfeeling snow stretching out as far as his eye can see.

He keeps himself apart from the others, locked inside his own thoughts. He cannot accept comfort, or the easy camaraderie the soldiers share. A gentle touch or knowing word will shatter him, break him apart into splinters of emotion and fading dreams orbiting the fear that she has not survived her duty. So Fairbanks pulls numbness tight around himself, burrowing into the physical exhaustion like a blanket held up against childhood monsters. The ache in his thighs, the feet that march and march and still never thaw out, the half-frozen hand that breaks icicles from the trees to keep his throat wet, it all serves as distance from that raw, pulsing terror in his heart.

With every step closer to Skyhold, the stone in his chest grows heavier. When they reach the gates, some of the pressure eases as he sees soldiers manning the portcullis. _Not everyone is lost, then,_ he thinks. The castle itself is marred from the battle that must have taken place: chunks of stone and mortar litter the courtyard, trees cracked in half as if from giants’ blows. And yet, the main violence must have taken place elsewhere, given the lack of draped bodies and wailing wounded.

As his company trail down the stairs, greeting old friends with clasps of hands and tearful hugs, Fairbanks turns his eyes to the castle proper. The doors are closed against the winter chill, and he has to unclench his fists against the fear of what he’ll find behind them. If he dares to open them. Part of him whispers that he can return to the Graves now. He’s delivered the soldiers in his care, and he owes nothing more to the Inquisition now that Corypheus presumably lies dead.

...the rest of him screams that here, as with those first letters before love bloomed bright between them, he is letting cowardice color his actions. And that won’t do.

Mind made up despite the dread in his stomach, he pushes past the last of the people on the path and takes the stairs two at a time. Over the shuffle of a hundred different soldiers, he swears he hears music. Sure that it is coming from his mind, Fairbanks bounds up the top three steps towards the doors, ignoring the protesting twang from his thighs. The two attendants jump to open them in time and, distantly, Fairbanks knows he must look quite the sight in his dark, veilfire-scorched armor, leaping from the darkness like a villain of old.

That music, though. It hasn’t stopped. If anything, with the doors opening and warm, golden light spilling over his snow-stained boots, it blooms louder into the night until even he can’t deny that it must be real. Soft, bright, something hopeful that wouldn’t be out of place at an Orlesian ball. But he doesn’t know why it would be playing at Skyhold.

Unless…

Whatever the reason, the musicians grind to a discordant stop as the heavy wooden doors boom back into place. And with their shuddering echo sealing him off into this foreign room, Fairbanks can’t make heads or tails of what he sees. After a moment, though, the glimmering colors come into focus— and makes even less sense than it did before. What looked like waves of color and light refines itself into a sea of rich fabrics and delicately detailed masks. Candles and torches and globes of gentle magelight reflect off silk, satin, and the jewelry of what must be at least two hundred people.

Every nation of Thedas is represented, brushed and curled and powdered in their evening finest, testament to how dire the war against Corypheus has been to bring them all together. Orlesian masks tilt as the eyes behind them study him, fans snapping into place to hide whispers. Scattered among the humans lurk a couple of Qunari, tall and streaked with fearsome warpaint. Dwarves step through the crowd to see better as he takes a step into the room, and a handful of Dalish watch him from a ring near the back of the room.

And there, one foot still on the dais of her throne, stands the one he’s been searching for. Isera’s eyes lock with his and the shock of them zings through him, even at this distance. Her lips form his name, clear as though he were right before her, and he gets three more dazed steps into the hall before a troupe of soldiers flank him, armed between them with a spear, two axes, and a flaming hand.

“Name and purpose,” one of them growls, the fire wreathing his hand flaring.

Fairbanks says the only thing that comes to mind, the phrase he’s practiced halfway across Thedas and had stopped hoping for a chance to say: “Safe passage.” Moving slowly, eyes fixed on the slow, almost disbelieving approach of Isera through the crowd, he reaches for the Inquisition symbol around his neck and hands it to the mage guard with the hostile eyes. “I was granted safe passage.”

“Let him pass!” Isera calls, and for the first time, Fairbanks can’t read her voice. It’s all ice cold, commanding; this is the voice of Thedas’ Inquisitor, a whip cracking through the masses that no one dares disobey. But the look in her eyes, the emotions racing one after another across her face, are all Isera. “Let him pass,” she repeats, softer.

Reluctantly, the guards back away. Within moments, she is an arm’s length away, brows drawn together like he’s a puzzle she can’t piece together. He looks her over helplessly, hands bunching at his sides. Dressed in a pair of delicately scaled leather leggings and a split riding tunic so coldly white he thinks back to the halla, silver hair curling wildly around her jaw, she outshines every dream he has ever had of her.

Better still, aside from the limp she can’t quite hide, she looks… alive. Real and glowing and _here in front of him._

The crowd has gone silent, or fallen back, or disappeared for all he knows. Or cares. Everything in his world narrows down to the woman walking towards him.

For months, he’s thought about what to say to her, at least as often as his practical side hissed that she has bigger worries. How he’d sweep in and fall to his knees, how he’d declare his love. For months, memories and fantasies and almost-promises put on parchment consumed more and more of his heart, until her absence became unbearable. But with her standing in front of him, brows pulled together and her shoulders squared against whatever his presence means…

“I had to find you,” he whispers, every ounce of truth he has in those five words. He’s been hers from the first moment he saw the slow curl of her smile and his heart stuttered with her name. From that first kiss, if not before. How do you look into eyes that carry as many lost souls as hers, and not lose yourself in them? How does one person carry the weight of an entire world on her shoulders with no one to lean against when she herself tires from the fight?

She’s so close now, he can feel the heat radiating off of her— and oh, he wants to step forward, to draw her to his chest and feel her breathing in his arms. But he doesn’t. Not yet. They’ve had precious little time for proper courting beyond a handful of letters, and he’s appeared out of nowhere, crashing against her castle gates. So he waits, painfully aware of every inch between them and praying for patience as devoutly as he ever has: the next move must be hers.

Isera’s fingers reach out, the faintest tremor in them, to brush the front of his jerkin. Despite the layers separating her skin from his, Fairbanks swears he can feel the searing heat of her touch— and then she is in his arms. Between one breath and the next, she launches herself at him, arms wrapping like stranglethorn around his neck, hot tears soaking his collar where she’s buried her face.

Her back seems too small, the breadth of his hand spanning more than half as he settles it between her shoulder blades, and under his touch she feels worryingly fragile, somehow. But when his other winds through her hair, it is as soft as he remembers, and the strength with which she pulls him close reassures him. “Shh, _mon coeur,_ ” he murmurs, eyes burning. “I am here.”

“Evariste,” she whispers, and then her hands find his jaw and her mouth slants over his and Andraste fucking take him now, he’s clearly died and gone to the Maker.

Time itself stands still. Nothing and no one exists beyond Isera, outside the world of her soft moan and the way she clutches at his hair when he nips at her lower lip. At the first brush of their tongues, sound disappears and the only thing he can hear is the ragged edge of their shared breath and the thunder of his pulse in his ears. It’s so easy to pull her even closer, almost up off her feet, licking love and devotion and _Thank the Maker you’re still alive_ into her mouth on prayers and whispers neither of them bother to finish.

Isera sighs, eyes still closed. She leans her forehead against his, the beginnings of a dazed smile curving her kiss-reddened mouth. Beneath his feet, the world sways and shudders, rocked to its core by the sheer rightness of their reunion. Now, at last, he feels like he can breathe again. All of the months and miles and held-back fears that Corypheus would end her as he died fall away; he is here, breathing her same soft scent— and as she moves her arm from his shoulder to his waist, his heart stutters as the shape of her gifted bracelet presses through her sleeve.

“ _Je t’appartiens._ ” It falls helplessly from his lips, brushed against the crown of her head like a promise. He said the same before, on that one shared night, and he meant it then as much as he means it now. He is hers, always.

Slowly, the world trickles back into their small bubble of peace, tendrils of candlelight and shuffling feet drawing them back into reality. A loaded sort of silence dances between the guests, something glittering and cruel waiting to slither forward. Isera must feel it, too; her fingers tighten on his leathers, her back draws up tight, and the warrior who raises her face to meet the crowd is nothing like the soft, relieved woman he’s just kissed.

The first titter is almost lost in the rustle of fabrics, but the second is loud enough to ripple through the people. It’s quiet, and were the musicians still playing, it would be hidden under the swell of sound. But they too are still leaning forward, watching the scene as it plays out before them. The mockery is all too familiar, burning in Fairbanks’ ears as it had while he wasted days in the courts of Orlais.

The Inquisitor looks at the man, still whispering gaily behind his fan— and the crowd parts, displaying the gossips easily. Frozen anger creeps through the party and, given what Isera wrote him of her early arguments with the Commander, Fairbanks is surprised that ice isn’t spiraling out from her. Either the spectator is truly oblivious, or daring enough to bring her wrath down on him; it isn’t until she steps away from Fairbanks that the fool looks up.

“Something to share, _Vicomte_?” That cold, cold, _cold_ voice rings out across the marbled floor, power and threat whispering under the deceptive quiet. “If it is so amusing, surely you should.” That coiled cruelty meets pure willpower, and shatters. “This is a celebration, after all.”

Under his half-mask, the Vicomte’s face colors. “Inquisitor,” he says, not bothering to keep the sneer out of his voice. “Surely you, the savior of Thedas, deserve better than some half-wild barbarian storming through your doors.” True to form, Fairbanks’ ears burn but he refuses to show discomfort or weakness. Slurs against his birth, his parentage, his House, even his decision to abandon the high Society of Orlais, are nothing new to him.

“Someone like you, you mean?” Isera asks, scarred brow arching. “Someone noble, an ally, a move to solidify my power?” Each word drips condescension, and it is a base satisfaction to watch the arrogant forced to drink cup after cup of her disdain. The Vicomte squirms under her gaze and, though she doesn’t move toward him, shrinks back, snapping his fan shut.

“Let me make something absolutely clear to you,” she continues, raising her voice into a hard edge that sweeps through the gathering. “I have led Thedas through fire after fire, and all the while, I have endured your hatred of elves, your hatred of mages, and your disbelief that your precious Maker could choose a magic-wielding _rabbit_ to defeat Corypheus.” And now, ice does crackle out across the floor, musical in a way even as flames dance up her arms— and the crowd takes a wary step back. Fairbanks steps forward, resting his fingers against the small of her back in support. “I have saved you, and asked for very little in return. But you will give me the respect of not mocking those I hold dear, or I will throw every one of you off my mountain.”

Behind Isera, standing in a ring of others near her throne, Fairbanks recognizes the infamous Sister Nightingale next to a lovely woman who is, presumably, the dedicated Ambassador Montilyet. Nightingale’s mouth has an amused quirk to it, and she tips her head in his direction, as if to ask, _Well? Are you going to say anything for yourself?_  When he nods in return, Lady Montilyet pinches the bridge of her nose, as if bracing herself.

It is his choice. He keeps repeating that in his mind as he faces the shifting crowd. This is his choice.

“Allow me, my love,” he whispers to Isera, hand trailing up and around her waist. Slowly, her shoulders soften enough that the thin streams of flame running across her tunic disappear— but she can’t turn her eyes from his fast enough to hide the bruised look in them. Anger warms his blood on her behalf. He knows— how well he knows!— the way rejection scars, and she’s shared enough with him to show that they both have them.

“I am Fairbanks, champion of the refugees who fled Orlais, and the Mage-Templar war.” His mind races, thoughts churning a storm in his head: _It’s not too late. I can still turn back_. Then he sees Isera from the corner of his eye, sees her face close up into the mask of the Inquisitor again, and realizes she… expects him to. Shame lances his heart for a brief moment, and he steels himself. “I am also Evariste, the last scion of the House of Lemarque.”

Silence follows his proclamation, both from the stunned Orlesians— and from the woman next to him.

Finally, the Vicomte comes— or is pushed— forward. He adjusts his mask with a jerky hand, and faces Fairbanks. “You,” he says, accent thickening with disgust, “are an impostor. The House of Lemarque died with the Lord Giroux on his sickbed.”

“Ah, my lord Vicomte,” a voice purrs from the shadows. “Have I mentioned how very _good_ it is to see you this evening, my dear? Why, I remember when our lady Inquisitor approached you in the halls of Halamshiral and you turned her away with mockery! How the times have changed, that now you celebrate her great victory and even presume to speak in her stead.”

A wave of snickering sweeps through the guests, and Fairbanks feels Isera’s fingers twine through his. Though something about the graceful woman stepping forward and raising her glass in a mocking toast to the Orlesian makes him want to sink into the floor— or at least into a bath until he’s presentable; Madame de Fer's reputation is a legend among even the lowest nobility—, it pleases him that her advisors and companions automatically close ranks around her.

“Alas, one would hope that you’d learned to remove your foot from your mouth before speaking on matters outside your small views,” Vivienne continues, nodding graciously to the Ambassador. “Unfortunately, in the face of your unreserved incivility, the Inquisitor has forged other partnerships. So you see, my dear, if you’re trying to claim some favor with our Lady, you’re a few seasons too late.” She pauses, taking a sip of her drink. “Just like that tired old family doublet you no doubt borrowed.”

The man’s face reddens, the shamed flush crawling down toward his collar even before Josephine steps forward, clearing her throat into the silence. “As it happens, Vicomte Boivin,” she says, her voice as firm as it is gentle. “Lord Lemarque is within his rights to claim his title. Some months ago, he requested that I contact the Council of Heralds, and after reviewing his evidence, his nobility has been well authenticated.”

Isera is silent, hardly even moving under his touch, and a shiver works its way down his spine. Josephine continues, with a smile that would be kind if it weren’t laced with absolute authority. “Of course, if you have evidence to the contrary, I am confident the Council would be willing to review that as well.”

“So you see, my dear.” Vivienne picks up the thread, raising her glass towards Fairbanks even as she continues weaving the trap around the floundering Boivin. “I believe you owe our Lord Lemarque an apology.” The Vicomte sputters, hissing like an overheated teakettle. “And I’m sure you won’t begrudge our Lady her connections. After all, he’s _your_ equal, no?”

The crowd laughs at that, at the pure and simple dismissal of it, and the knot of dissension breaks up as guests drift away from the humiliated noble. Vivienne, looking pleased with herself, glides towards them. “If you plan to make a getaway, dears, this might be the time,” she murmurs, setting an empty wine flute on a server’s tray and taking another. “That fool’s ego can only be silenced for so long.”

Isera says nothing, but bows her head to the Madame, and backs them toward the throne. Through the crowd, Fairbanks catches a glimpse of Varric and Dorian, two of her friends that he met in the Graves. Neither looks overly pleased to see him, and as Isera pulls him after her, he sees Dorian’s eyes narrow. She is still silent, even when he turns to face her. Though it’s out in the open, now, he owes her… something. Some word or phrase, some offering to offset what must look like carelessness or secrecy to her. Nightingale breezes by, giving him a slight smile, and when no words come to mind, he simply blurts it out: “I gave Clara’s proof to Lady Montilyet.”

“Why?” Isera takes a breath, and it’s so controlled, so careful and cautious, he almost winces. “I gave that to you to do whatever you wanted with it, yes, but…”

If this is a test, he thinks, then the best, and only, answer he can offer her is the truth. “I wanted to be with you. Over the course of our separation, I had much time to reflect. And somewhere along the way, between letters and memories and perhaps a wish or two, I fell in love with you.” Isera’s eyes widen and, whether true or his imagination, Fairbanks sees Dorian and Varric lean forward.

He’d much rather make his confessions in private, but he’s come this far, and there is no sense in changing course now. “I am in love with you. With the Inquisitor, as much as with Isera Lavellan. As a vigilante, all I could offer you was another blade to your cause, and a man to adore you from afar. But as a noble…” He sighs. “As a noble, I can bring wealth, and another name backing your moves. He may have meant it as a slap at me, but whatever else Boivin said, he has a point that anyone to court you publicly should bring something valuable to your table. Your suitor should not unbalance your seat of power.”

“Did you think I could not love you as Fairbanks?” Isera lays a hand on his arm, her expression pained. “Evariste, nobility isn’t what you wanted. It isn’t what I wanted for you.” She rubs at her face, leaving the tiniest smudge to her carefully applied cosmetics. “I would never ask this of you. Fairbanks was enough for me.”

To deny her concern would be easy. But it would also strain this growing, glowing thing between them; nothing like what he wants with her can be built on such a lie. Carefully, he strokes her hand, giving her fingers a squeeze. “True, embracing my nobility is not something I look forward to. I am too much the backwoods heathen they believe, and I expect that even the romantics among the Courts who sigh and swoon over the romance of it all may find me ill-mannered and wanting after a time.”

Isera’s lips part as if to protest and he squeezes her hand gently. Even with dozens of people milling around them, each trying to catch the eye of one or both of them, each leaning in to eavesdrop, he does nothing to hide the love— or heat— in his voice.

“This is my choice, _chérie,_ ” he reminds her. Saying the words aloud helps unclench the muscles in his back. He could have walked away, returned to the Dales and the life being built there— and been a smaller person for it. And, for the first time in many years, he can admit to himself that while Fairbanks may have been enough for her, perhaps… perhaps it wasn’t enough for himself. “To be at your side, here with you in any capacity, I would sacrifice far more than my anonymity.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this, having this AU spiral out of control, has given me a lot of insight into the canon I've constructed for Isera and Cullen. It's shown me just how fragile all those first ties were because with the wrong nightmare lingering, the wrong word, they could just as easily have gone on orbiting each other and never making it past strained friendship. 
> 
> As much as I have come to love Fairbanks, the canon of Believe stays the same. I just... really appreciate it a bit more, now.


End file.
